


Honey

by inspiredbythemusic



Series: NCT 127 Drabbles [4]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:42:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26806051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspiredbythemusic/pseuds/inspiredbythemusic
Relationships: Kim Jungwoo (NCT)/Reader
Series: NCT 127 Drabbles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850926
Kudos: 3





	Honey

Had all of the compartments of the daunting— albeit magnificent— Hogwarts Express not been filled to capacity, you never would have met him. 

Clinging to your cat, named Pumpkin for his orange fur that made your eyes water, your only token from home in this strange new magical world, you tiptoed into a compartment near the back of the train. It was empty except for the pair of boys sitting by the window. You sat on the seat opposite them, as close as possible tot he door, and fought to keep your gaze on anything but them. That proved impossible, though, once you caught a glimpse of them. 

“Here’s some money if you want to get something from the trolly,” said the elder boy. His black hair framed his pale face in a way that brought your attention to his striking eyes. They were a bright shade of green that matched his tie. They glistened like a pair of emeralds. Unnatural. Magical. 

The younger boy, accepting the coins in both hands, looked very much like the elder. They shared the same angled eye shape, the same long eyelashes, the same plush pink lips. The only differences were that the younger boy’s hair was a honey-blonde color, his cheeks were fuller and rosier, and his eyes were warm brown. Natural. Still magical. 

As he rose to his feet, the elder caught you staring. He greeted you with a closed-mouth grin and waved both hands. “It looks like you have an admirer, Jungwoo. Try befriending her." 

Your eyes followed him out of the compartment until you were distracted by the sound of shuffling and somebody clearing their throat. 

It was the younger boy, Jungwoo, now sitting directly in front of you. When you looked at him, startled enough by his sudden proximity to stare right into his wide-open eyes, you were surprised to find that his face was crimson. More startling— his hair, starting from the roots, was transforming from honey blonde to dark maroon to match his blush. 

You gasped, "Your hair!” pointing like you had never been taught manners. You realized your mistake once his blush deepened and his hand rose to pat at his hair. 

“Oh. That.” Jungwoo giggled, so you had to giggle too even though you didn’t understand what was funny. His broad smile revealed a pair of oversized teeth right at the center of his mouth. Maybe that was supposed to be a flaw, but the fluttering of your heart argued otherwise. “I’m a metamorphmagus!”

Your brow furrowed. “A metamorph-ma-what?" 

Again, Jungwoo laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh that made you feel at all self-conscious. It was a laugh that pulled up at the corners of your mouth, which had been fixed in a wobbly line since your parents left you at Platform 9 ¾. 

"A metamorphmagus!” He repeated. Realizing that you had never heard the word before, Jungwoo explained, “It means that I can change my appearance at will. Sometimes, like now, my appearance changes with my emotions. Taemin embarrassed em, so my hair turned fire-truck red, right?" 

Nodding to answer his question, you said, "Taemin?” Only in hindsight are you embarrassed that you were more fascinated by the beautiful older boy’s equally beautiful name than you were by Jungwoo’s unique innate magical ability. 

Jungwoo’s smile faltered, but he entertained your curiosity nonetheless. “Yeah. Taemin. He’s my older brother.”

You wondered, “Is he a metamorphmagus too?” figuring that magic was the only means through which anybody could look that alluring. 

“He naturally looks like that, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Jungwoo said matter-of-factly, almost rolling his eyes. “He only ever changes his eye color. Sometimes he makes his hair blonde. Guess there’s not much to change when you’re born perfect." 

Jungwoo dropped his gaze to watch his slender fingers pick at the seat. It didn’t take a genius to gather that he was jealous of his brother. That was natural enough, you guessed, but you couldn’t quite understand Jungwoo’s scowl. 

You told him, "You look like Taemin,” and Jungwoo’s face and hair burned an even darker shade of red. 

Jungwoo raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really?" 

"Really.” You nodded your head and allowed Pumpkin to leap out of your lap. Watching him settle into the space beside Jungwoo, grinning as Jungwoo reached out to pet him, you confessed, “I think you’re cuter.” Carefully, you omitted that pretty was the better word for Taemin. 

“Really?” Jungwoo asked, failing (or maybe not even trying) to keep the hopeful tone out of his voice. His hair turned pale pink. You wondered what pink signified if red resulted from embarrassment, but it seemed rude to ask outright. 

“Really!” You smiled. Noticing his yellow tie, you pointed and asked, “What do the colors mean? Taemin’s tie was green, and yours is yellow." 

Jungwoo never asked outright if you were Muggle-born, but it must have been obvious that you were. He never treated your ignorance as a convenience. If anything, he seemed to enjoy explaining his world to you. 

"The colors represent different houses.” His hand absentmindedly clutched around his tie. “You know about the sorting ceremony, right?" 

"Yeah." 

Prior to the start of the term, an official from the school visited your home and explained some general things about Hogwarts and the Wizarding World, but most of the information had been too foreign, too abstract to resonate in your mind. 

"Taemin’s tie was green because he was sorted into Slytherin. You might have seen his Head Boy badge, too, if you were looking hard enough. That means he’s in charge of all the Prefects and stuff, but you don’t have to worry about that. You can’t be a Prefect until your fifth year. Just listen to the people wearing badges, and you should be fine." 

Jungwoo’s embarrassment, jealousy, and whatever caused his hair to turn pink must have faded. As he talked about his brother, his hair returned to the honey-blonde color that you assumed must have been the default. You were glad; he looked cutest with his blonde hair and brown eyes that matched his yellow tie. 

"What does yellow mean?” You asked him. “And what year are you?" 

"I’m a second-year,” Jungwoo said, placing himself just one year ahead of you. “And yellow is the color of my house: Hufflepuff." 

"Hufflepuff.” You smiled around the word. It was cute. “I hope I get sorted there too." 

Jungwoo stared at you like you had grown a second head. "Are you serious? Nobody, except the true Hufflepuffs of course, ever says that they want to be in our house." 

"Well,” you shrugged, “I do. My only friend in the whole school— in the whole Wizarding World– is in Hufflepuff!”

“Your only— oh!” Jungwoo broke into a big smile, the one that flaunted his oversized front teeth and made your heart flutter. “Well, then— wait—” he giggled— “what’s your name?" 

Holding your hand out for him to shake, you told him your name.

"Well, then, Y/N,” he made your name new as he accepted your hand, “I hope you get sorted into Hufflepuff too!”

With both of you hoping for the same thing over a shared mountain of candy purchased with Taemin’s money, how could the Sorting Hat have sent you anywhere other than Jungwoo’s side? From that moment Jungwoo winked at you as he touched his goblet of pumpkin juice to yours, you were inseparable within the walls of the castle (except, of course, during classes, where you were separated due to your age difference). 

You would have been lost without him, especially during that first year. He warned you not to get on Professor Snape’s bad side, and he insisted that Professor McGonagall’s assignments were to be prioritized above others, and he taught you all of the best routes to get to your classes without being derailed by the moving staircases, and he told you that you could turn to Professor Sprout— your head of house— for help with almost anything. When he made the mistake of taking Divination in his third year, he warned you against following in his footsteps. When he was allowed to visit Hogsmeade with Ten and Jaehyun (his friends from Slytherin and Ravenclaw, respectively), he was sure to bring samples of all the candy in Honeydukes back to the common room to share with you. 

He wouldn’t let you pay him back no matter how much you insisted. “You can make it up to me when you go to Hogsmeade with us,” Jungwoo said as if it were all about the candy, probably assuming that you would forget the debt within the year. 

Over the following years, you made it your mission to repay his every kindness. When Jungwoo debuted as the chaser on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, you cheered so loudly that everybody in the school gathered that you had a crush on him (and you said nothing to dispel the rumors). When he found his passion for wildlife through Care of Magical Creatures, you would listen to him ramble about winged horses and phoenixes long after everyone else— even Jaehyun— lost interest. 

When you huddled together in the warmth of the Three Broomsticks after trudging through the early December snow, you slapped your sickles down on the table to pay for his Butterbeer before Jungwoo even had the chance to blink. 

“I sure wish I was Y/N’s favorite,” Mark— a Gryffindor who became your second best friend after years of solidarity in Defense Against the Dark Arts— grumbled as he stood to fish through his pockets for money. 

Jaehyun laughed. His was never a cruel laugh. It was just a light chuckle that barely wrinkled his eyes. “Keep wishing, dude. Don’t you know that Jungwoo and Y/N are, like, soulmate best friends?" 

"Yeah!” Ten sang, laughing and pointing at your blush and the red streaking through Jungwoo’s hair. “They’re gonna get married one day. Or at least kiss in the Room of Requirement!”

While Mark hesitantly joined Ten in laughter, and you should have denied wanting to marry or at least kiss Jungwoo, you asked, “What’s the Room of Requirement?" 

Having gone too red in the face (and hair) to even enjoy his Butterbeer, Jungwoo shrugged and stared down at the table. You might have tried to brighten his mood by ruffling his hair or pinching at his cheeks if Jaehyun hadn’t captured your attention with his explanation. 

"It’s a secret room within the school that reveals itself when a person is in great need of it,” Jaehyun explained. Dimples formed around his smile. “Apparently, it will come equipped with whatever you need! Isn’t that amazing?”

You smiled in support of Jaehyun’s very Ravenclaw-esque appreciation of magic. “Does wanting to kiss Jungwoo count as a great need?" 

As laughter fell over the table, and Jungwoo stiffened at your side, biting down on his smile, Ten hummed, "I dunno. Guess it depends on how much you wanna kiss him!”

Noticing quickly that your gaze had fallen onto the table and that even your ears were tinted pink from embarrassment, Jungwoo eagerly changed the subject. “Did you know that Dumbledore has a phoenix in his office?" 

Jaehyun said, "You’ve mentioned it once or twice." 

"Oh, Fawkes?” Ten shrugged as he gulped down his Butterbeer. “Yeah, he’s pretty cool, I guess. He’s not the coolest thing in Dumbledore’s office, though." 

Unfamiliar with the antics that often sent Ten to the headmaster’s office, and even less familiar with Jungwoo’s fascination with magical creatures that would likely one day lure him into some place far more dangerous than Dumbledore’s study, Mark gasped. "You guys have actually been to Dumbledore’s office?” Mark wasn’t a particularly reckless sort of Gryffindor. He was exceptionally honorable— the kind who never once lost his house any points. 

“Dozens of times!” Ten boasted and excitedly told Mark of every adventure he had since arriving at Hogwarts. 

You listened, though not with nearly as much enthusiasm as Mark, who sat on the edge of his seat as Ten recounted his first walk through the Forbidden Forest. You were much more interested in Jungwoo. His hair had returned almost entirely to its familiar honey-blonde shade save for the few strands of pink that remained and darkened when he caught you staring at him. 

“What is it?” Jungwoo spoke quietly, as if afraid to attract attention from the others in the group as if there was any way to steal the spotlight from Ten. “Do I have something on my face?" 

"No.” You shook your head and reached out for one of the colored streaks in his hair. Jungwoo didn’t flinch away. “I’m just wondering: what does pink mean, Woo?" 

"You’ve always had a lot of questions,” he said, blushing. He hesitated briefly before saying, “My hair turns pink when somebody makes my heart flutter. My hair turns pink around you a lot, doesn’t it?" 

You smiled at the way he bashfully averted his gaze. "Yeah, but that’s okay. If I were a metamorphmagus, my hair would turn pink around you too. You know, since I like you. Always. Since that first day on the train." 

"You like me?” Jungwoo sighed, failing (or maybe not even trying) to keep the smile from his face. “Like, you’d want to kiss me in the Room of Requirement?" 

Lowering your voice to a whisper to deny Ten fuel for teasing, you dared to admit, "Like, I’d want to kiss you right here. Right now. You know, if we were alone." 

As he always had, Jungwoo took your words to heart. So suddenly that Ten fell silent to watch, slackjawed, with Jaehyun and Mark, Jungwoo stood. He grabbed your hand and led you out into the frozen winter where he gave you the first of many kisses, his lips’ taste of butterscotch swelling your heart and covering you in unseasonal warmth. 

Suffice it to say that he liked you too. Always. Since that first day on the train. 


End file.
